Xizheng Yu
Hi! My name is Xizheng and I am currently at 
pursuing my Sc.M. in Computer Science, working with Prof. Thomas Serre.
Previously, I did my undergraduate studies at 
with a triple major in Computer Sciences, Mathematics, and Data Science, where I worked with
Prof. Vikas Singh and Prof. Timothy T. Rogers.
My research interests lie at the intersection of computational cognitive science,
computational linguistics, model evaluation, and brain-inspired models. Specifically, I'm interested in but not limited to (1) đ evaluating and understanding the internal representations of vision and language models through the rigorous lens of cognitive science and neuroscience; (2) đ§ building novel, biologically-inspired architectures that learn and generalize in more robust, human-like ways.
Publications & Preprints
[1] I. Felipe*, X. Yu*, J. Mulinken, N. Pant, T. Serre
HMAX Strikes Back: Biologically-Inspired Architectures For Scale Invariance
Under Review
[2] X. Yu, J. Torok, S. Pandya, S. Pal, V. Singh, A. Raj
Brain-wide interpolation and conditioning of gene expression in the human brain using Implicit Neural Representations
Preprint
[3] S. Suresh, K. Mukherjee, T. Giallanza, X. Yu, M. Patil, J. Cohen, T. T. Rogers
AI-enhanced semantic feature norms for 786 concepts
Cogsci 2025 & ICLR 2025 Bi-Align
đ Best Paper Award
[4] K. Mukherjee, S. Suresh, X. Yu, G. Lupyan
The role of shared labels and experiences in representational alignment
ICLR 2024 Re-Align
[5] S. Suresh, K. Mukherjee, X. Yu, W. Huang, L. Padua, T. T. Rogers
Conceptual structure coheres in human cognition but not in large language model
EMNLP 2023
Honors & Awards
Best Paper Award @ Bidirectional Human AI Alignment Workshop ICLR 2025 and CHI 2025
Computational Modeling Prize for Applied Cognition @ Cogsci 2025
Distinction in the Major @ UW-Madison Computer Science
Services
Reviewer, CogSci 2025
Reviewer, ICLR 2025 Workshop on Representational Alignment (Re-Align)
Teaching Experience
At Brown
CPSY 1291: Computational Methods for Mind, Brain and BehaviorFall 25
At Wisc
CS 320: Data Science Programming IISpring 23
CS 400: Algorithms and Data Structures in JavaFall 22
Math 234: Multi-variable CalculusFall 22
Beyond Research
In my spare time, I do a lot of stuff.
đž I enjoy playing (a lot of) tennis, and I play a blue Yonex Ezone 98 racquet.
đŗ I love cooking Chinese food, I also enjoy experimenting with new recipes and cuisines.
đī¸ I'm a big Formula 1 fan.
đšī¸ I make this cute game with Gemini 3. Check out my Flappy Bird!